The world-famous email column

Issue #115 – “Greatest Hits” – September 17th, 2007

-Greatest Hits compilations are a tricky business. Everyone hates those fucking bands that have been around for like three years, produce a couple of mildly popular songs, and then just start putting out multi-disc Greatest Hits box sets like it’s their job. As a comedian, I didn’t want to fall into a similar trap. Throughout September, I am proud to be celebrating ten years since I began writing this column way back in 1997. Although I’m no musician, I have now been putting out material (and taking down the occasional groupie) for a solid decade – a milestone I humbly deemed worthy of my first Greatest Hits issue. Selecting which of my anecdotes would be considered “greatest” was a challenge – they’re all my babies. But in the end, I chose jokes that met one of three criteria: 1) they invoked a strong reader reaction, 2) they remained particularly poignant after many years, or 3) they were a personal favorite of mine. And don’t worry, this will be my last Greatest Hits edition for at least another five to ten… months (just kidding). As with last week’s glossary, the issue and year in which the entry originally appeared follows each joke. I hope you enjoy, and thank you for joining me to celebrate ten years of Ruminations!

-I’ve found that when I’m on the treadmill I tend to slyly glance at the person next to me to see how fast they’re running. Like we’re in some sort of crazy race that goes nowhere. [#45, 2003]

-Ever notice that when you’re sitting at a restaurant and the waiter comes over to take your order, you instinctively re-open and look at your menu even though you already know exactly what you want? [#46, 2004]

-Do you have that one poster in your dorm room that has fallen down every single day so far? And it’s always right over your bed so it falls on you in the middle of the night and scares the shit out of you? And the funny thing is you’re too lazy to put any extra tape on it to make it stick so you put it back up knowing full well that it’s going to fall down again in about twelve hours. [#10, 1998]

-I have this sneaking suspicion that when people say to me “No worries,” they mean just the opposite. [#96, 2006]

-Ever realize that when the light turns red and you are still in the middle of the street and you do that little hybrid jog/skip/walk where you flail your arms about like an idiot, you are actually moving at the same speed as if you just plain walked instead? [#31, 2002]

-I love pre-med kids. They’re fucking nuts, especially when it comes to the MCATs. Those crazy bastards won’t go out for five months just to study for one test. I think I’m going to have to study medicine alongside my pre-med friend Shermdog, just so I’ll be able to administer first-aid when he gets bombed out of his mind right after the test is finally over. [#18, 2000]

-I love watching people dab the top of a slice of pizza with a napkin to try to soak up some of the grease. Good job, big guy. Now it’s just like eating a rice cake. [#37, 2003]

-Just once, when you’re walking down the hallway at work and a co-worker is walking toward you and you both almost walk right into each other because you both moved the same way, and then you laugh under your breath and start sort of stutter-stepping to try to get around one another, don’t you just want to uppercut the guy in the face and be done with it already? [#47, 2004]

-I don’t know what scares me more, the fact that my mom asked me if I want luggage for my birthday, or the fact that I think I do. [#39, 2003]

-Why do cab drivers get so upset when you hit traffic? It’s not like they’re getting out. [#32, 2002]

-To me, summer in New York City is like going through puberty. Beforehand, you’re both apprehensive and excited about what lies ahead. Then, you don’t even realize it’s underway until halfway through when you start breaking out and can’t stop thinking about girls. And when it’s all over, your memory of what actually happened is fuzzy, the frequent awkward moments replaced forever in your mind with sporadic instances of glory. [#41, 2003]

-The other day, my remote control died. I grabbed some new batteries, opened the remote, took out the old batteries, then looked down at the pile of four batteries in front of me – two new, two old – and had no idea which was which. I think the shock of how dumb I felt was enough to power the remote. [#71, 2005]

-I was partying in Chicago last year when I accomplished a first for me – I had two different tabs on two different cards open simultaneously at the same bar. Some might call that being an idiot. But I call it “building credit history.” [#105, 2007]

-How come whenever I am introduced to people who are supposedly “so like me” I hate them? [#35, 2003]

-I think that people’s reaction when I tell them that I don’t drink coffee is equivalent to my reaction when people tell me that they don’t drink alcohol. [#85, 2006]

-I have no idea how to do laundry. No, no, not like I have some idea but just don’t know how much fabric softener to use, I mean I have NO IDEA how to do laundry. I just had this vision that there would be some cute chick in the laundry room every time I went there who would show me how to do it. Dreams die hard, but I have no underwear. [#1, 1997]

-Getting up at the crack of dawn for work is sort of like doing the New York Times crossword puzzle – it gets harder and harder as the week goes on until it’s almost impossible on Friday. [#40, 2003]

-My college girlfriend recently got engaged to my fraternity brother, who she dated immediately after me. Like I always say, if you’re gonna lose in the playoffs, might as well be to the team that wins the championship. [#94, 2006]

-Why I am I constantly being bombarded with mass emails containing “new contact info” from people I never contact in the first place? [#32, 2002]

-Here at Penn it’s time for Rush and oh what a great time it is. The freshman girls are putting on their finest black pants and having fake conversations with sorority girls they will eventually backstab. Later, the sororities will utilize the accurate process of scantron bubble sheets to determine which girls are best suited for their house. Meanwhile, the freshman guys are realizing that free beer does taste better and getting so wasted they don’t even remember which frat boys they were talking to. Later, the frat boys will attempt to figure out which guys they want even though they were so wasted they didn’t even know Rush was going on in the first place. It sure is a good thing that the next three years of a person’s life are being determined in such an efficient manner. [#18, 2000]

-I hate dudes wearing suits in bars. Listen buddy, it’s a hundred degrees in here and no one is impressed that you’re a fucking banker. [#29, 2002]

-I stayed in my parents’ house on Long Island for most of last week, which was confusing for everybody because I sound exactly like my father on the phone. I swear one time my dad called the house, I picked up, and he was like, “Wait a minute… me?” [#91, 2006]

-Why is there a sign outside the sauna in the men’s locker room of my gym that says: “Do not use if pregnant.”? [#39, 2003]

-Why are the last few days before you leave for college when you run around trying to see everyone you didn’t bother to hang out with the whole summer? [#9, 1998]

-You know what I’m tired of? People saying, “I’m very disappointed in you.” When I was a kid and got in trouble, my parents always gave me that same speech: “We’re very disappointed in you.” In college, when my fraternity got in trouble, we were told by an administrator, “I’m very disappointed in you.” At work, when I messed up, my bosses said to me, “We’re not your parents and this isn’t college anymore…but we’re very disappointed in you.” You know what? Shut the fuck up already. I’m sick of everyone having such high expectations. And when do I get to be the one disappointed, huh? [#39, 2003]

-If you can’t feed Gremlins after midnight, then when can you feed them? [#10, 1998]

-How come moms never know their own cell phone number? [#23, 2001]

-You know you’re wasted when you’re standing in the elevator for ten minutes, wondering why nothing’s happening, before you realize you never pressed any buttons. [#73, 2005]

-To me, single women in their twenties are like a preseason football game – it may seem like they’re trying to score, but really they just don’t want to get hurt. [#43, 2003]

-Doesn’t it suck how you’re always bragging to your friends at other colleges how awesome your school is and how much you party and when they finally come and visit, it’s the worst weekend ever? And you try to explain to them that it’s not usually like this, but they totally don’t believe you. [#11, 1998]

-My roommate Brian and I regularly have a woman clean our apartment and do our laundry. I am not embarrassed by this – we are both financially independent and that’s one perk we choose to spend our money on. What I am embarrassed about is that we decide to call the cleaning woman not when our apartment is sufficiently dirty, but when we run out of underwear. The problem is, we have different amounts of underwear and so an argument ensues every time. In order to ease tensions between us, we held an “underwear summit” where we both decided on a per day underwear allowance that would result in a mutually agreed upon laundry day. Cooler heads prevailed for a while until Brian’s girlfriend broke the ceasefire by buying him a few new pairs, thus throwing off the balance of power. My ally, my mom, responded by buying me even more underwear and now Brian and I are locked in a heated battle to stockpile the largest arsenal. It’s like the Cold War of boxers. [#48, 2004]

-Is it weird that when I’m introduced to two people who are going out, the first thing I do is imagine them fucking? [#38, 2003]

-I think that every college campus has “that bar.” You know, that bar that everyone goes to all the time yet everyone complains it sucks and asks why everyone keeps going there? I think we should all stop complaining about “that bar.” Embrace it for what it is and accept that you will always go there anyway. And admit it, sometimes it’s even fun. [#20, 2000]

-Why are there more personnel at the airport helping people who can’t figure out how to use the “self-service” e-ticket machine than anywhere else? [#39, 2003]

-All my friends who share a dorm bathroom with just one roommate always brag about how great it is. Personally, I would rather share a toilet with ten other guys than just one. It’s all about the uncertainty principle. When there is something disgusting on the toilet seat in a communal bathroom, you’re never sure who did it. But if you only share the toilet with one other person, you know exactly who the dirty little fucker is – your roommate! [#2, 1997]

-The women of New York will always be my first love. But after careful empirical analysis, I have to say the chicks in LA are, on average, much hotter. Whether gourmet LA girls are approachable or not, well, that’s another story. In fact, my buddy Ryan even makes the laughable but logical case that the girls out here are actually TOO hot. Which prompts me to pose an important philosophical question – if a perfect ten walks in the door but no one can talk to her…does she exist? [#74, 2005]

-Quote of the Decade. I thought Brian summed up the twentsyomething experience beautifully when he once said to me, “Karo, you know what would make me completely happy? If I could just weigh less than my jeans cost.” [#37, 2003]

-I believe that marriage is the great equalizer of twentysomething life. There’s nothing I enjoy more than watching a chick wait desperately for her boyfriend to get off his ass and propose already. You have to understand, ladies, our entire lives since puberty have been predicated on waiting for you. We’re always ready to hook up, but we don’t get blown or fucked until one of you decides the time is right. But by tradition, the man alone decides when to propose. This is the first and only time we hold all the cards. So if your boyfriend has been beating around the bush about dropping the knee, don’t misinterpret it as cold feet. It just takes a while to absolve fifteen years of sexual frustration. Payback’s a bitch, ain’t it? [#94, 2006]

-I love when someone at the pizza place tries to pay with a fifty-dollar bill and the cashier holds it up to the light and studies it closely like he’s some kind of counterfeiting expert. Stick to slicing pepperoni, chief. [#40, 2003]

-Does this happen to you? You’re at a party, hanging out, drinking a few beers. You sit down, put your half-full beer can on the table, and turn to talk to someone. You look back a split-second later and notice that there are a thousand identical beer cans on the table and you have no idea which one is yours! Then you start to pick each one up, because you think you know how heavy yours was. [#11, 1998]

-I think that if you went to college anywhere with a direction in its name, you drink way more heavily than anybody else. Think about it. University of North Texas. Western Carolina. Central Florida. These people get really fucked up. I don’t know if they feel inferior because their school is so far in the middle of nowhere that a directional name is necessary and they have to compensate or what. They might as well call it University of South Holy Shit I’m Plastered. [#55, 2004]

-To me, talking to my parents is like being a producer for CNN – even if nothing is happening, I still have to come up with some sort of news to satisfy everyone. [#108, 2007]

-And, finally, here is a prime example of why I feel strongly that you should never lie to chicks about your age. Triplet #1 and I were at this dive bar downtown that is frequented by NYU chicks. While I was distracted by a game of Golden Tee, Triplet #1 approached a bunch of girls and asked them if they went to NYU. They said they were first-years. Not wanting to intimidate a bunch of freshmen by telling them we were twenty-three, Trip 1 lied and said we were juniors at NYU. When I joined the conversation, I was then forced to continue the charade. As I talked to one of the girls, I realized that something was terribly wrong. These chicks weren’t freshmen at NYU, they were first-years at NYU Med. We had just lied ourselves younger than them. Fuck me! [#33, 2002]